Daily Archives: May 17, 2011

My first thought when I saw today’s prompt from http://storyaday.org was “fantastic”.🙂 10 words to weave into today’s story. I love things like this (see May 13th) and was glad of something ‘easy’ as I have another packed day today. The words given to us are in bold.

Like anyone he loved holidays and preferred sun, sand and Sangria to exploring the deepest outbacks, a wildlife trek or climbing mountains. He and his three mates Tom, Rick and Bill would have the same week off every year, the first week in August, go to the travel agent, look in their window and pick something from the top row. As long as it was hot and had a beach they were happy. They could muck around anywhere.

During that week their wives would do their own things; a sun holiday elsewhere, a spa pamper packages or shopping trips to out-of-town retail outlet villages. These breaks would give them all time to remember their single lives for just long enough to have fun but then they’d start missing their partners and make up for being apart when they were reunited.

With the girls already booked in at a Scottish castle, the guys stood outside their local travel agents.

“I can’t see anything beachy,” Rick said.

“Me neither,” Tom agreed.

“Do we have to stick with the top row?” Bill asked.

“That’s the rule,” Joe reminded them.

“I’m going inside,” Rick said, Tom following him.

“But there’s nothing there,” Bill moaned to Joe as they continued to stare at the cards in the window.

“There’s plenty.”

“Yeah, on the second, third…”

“We always stick to the top.”

“Well, maybe this year…”

“And it’s worked out, hasn’t it? Maybe it’s time to do something different.” Joe pointed to the middle card on the top row. “There’s a shooting trip to Kenya.”

So, the words we were given (by the wonderful guys at http://www.creativecopychallenge.com do check them out) were: regular, sun, wild, muck, shoot, frustration, hand, take, push, trip and unlike usual exercises like this I decided to include them in that exact order. A couple of times I was tempted to deviate but it was more fun not to. The hardest one turned out to be ‘frustration’ as I wanted to put ‘frustrated’ or ‘frustrate’ and as I’d sort of cheated with wild/wildlife, I was determined to use the full word and I got there. And the best thing was that it took me about half an hour so had it done before I walked the dog, had a shower and headed off for my Red Cross stint (see yesterday’s ditty (part one) – http://wp.me/p18Ztn-9H).